The biggest problem with a quixotic life is the distance.

Closing your eyes and dreaming of that perfect place is one thing-getting there is something else entirely.

And as much as your destination leads you on, it also acts as constant reminder of how far you have to go, of the battles you’ve yet to fight, the mountains still to climb.

In the end it all gets too unbearable to face, the reality of it all grinding you down, day by day.

So you walk with your head down.

Keeping in the direction you were headed, dealing with things as they come but too fearful to look at where you are headed.

You learn to forget about the dreams you once had and get used to living a life of functional, gloomy necessity.

Then one day, the rains subside.

You find yourself walking with the sun on your back, with love at your side, the place you’ve been trying so hard to get too, close enough to taste.

And, though all of you is tired-you’ve come such a long way.

Tye Tribbett And GA-Mighty Long way

You`re the brother of one of the world`s most famous “cult” DJs – maybe the most famous - if such a thing is possible. Such is his credibility that he only has to play a record and everyone wants it. Its price goes up a minimum of five-fold. Everything he produces or remixes sells out in days. Is discussed ad nauseum. All other DJs now grow beards and wear their hair long. You`re his younger brother. You`re also a DJ. In fact, you were organizing warehouse parties back when he was happy to hang out, get high and play drums in a punk band. Visa problems mean he can`t fly. He`s effectively trapped where he is. Its not a bad place to be – sun and surf – but a world-wide audience misses out. What do you do?

I tell you what I`d do. I`d milk it for all it was worth. The world can`t have my brother, let them have me. I`d grow the beard. Grow the hair. Play the records. To be fair half of them were mine in the first place. I`d be out every night. Cashing in.

What does Guy do? He`s clean shaven and wears a close crop. Despite the fact that he spends all his dough on records (and is on first names terms with all the shop owners – who are all DJs), in the three years he`s been in Japan he`s only had two gigs. I`ve had nine in eight months and I`m shit and by no means connected. I couldn`t believe it. He uses Japan`s most famous swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi, as his on-line avatar, but you couldn’t meet a more modest person

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a very quick something for your weekend and while i was tempted to rock my second re-uppage of the week i figured i could do better than that, that but tide and time wait for no chick and i’m about to dash off for another timely trip across the sea to the land of good food and justice, a delightful segway which (almost) seamlessly allows me to let you know that yesterday GvsB posted a new Justice remix of Justin Timberlake’s LoveStoned, which you really need all up in your weekend.

the HL however… well, we’ll be kicking back on the boulevards and avenues of paris, a mere stones throw from the final resting place of galloise-smoking, womanising, pastis-sinking, french legend serge gainsbourg.

more from us when we return next week but until then, here’s proof that if you smoke heavily and know about jazz you get the girl.

serge gainsbourg & brigitte bardot - bonnie & clyde 

image via (the amazing) deleted images (obviously)

Regular readers will have no doubt noticed the absence of good friend and longtime Hl contributor jez’s posts recently. Behind the scenes he has been hard at work getting his new project innersounds up and running . As you would expect, the blog (part of a jez’s music consultancy empire in the making) features the kind of unique killer selection that will be sorely missed here at hl.

Hopefully when things are a bit more established, he will find the time to send the occasional extended monologue in this direction, but in the meantime you can go with him on his personal journey to inner-space.

Also worth clicking through and bookmarking, is the fantastic SF Gospel blog, written by Gabriel Mckee. Where else will you find articles on the place of religion in world’s conquered by zombies or a review of the transformers that references Philip K. Dick, Martin Luther and (my current internet obsession) cloverfield. If only he could have worked in a few references to french electronic music, a deep love of cakes, scandy design and mid-eighties prince we could have shutdown hl altogether and replaced it with a rss feed to his site.

Oh well, we’re safe for the moment.

Here’s a track that’s featured on Trev Jackson’s incredible (and mind boggling) Playgroup Party mix which you can find more about on this aladdin’s cave of a mp3 blog that I stumbled upon monday (and haven’t been quite the same since)

It’s one of those records that walks that fine line between being rubbishly 80’s and amazingly 80’s but it’s got a vocoder in it-a let’s be honest that usually swings it.

Nairobi & the awesome foursome-Funky soul makossa

it might come as a wee bit of a surprise to another dj i know but i think i’m developing an obsession with maurice fulton (sorry baby).

not satisfied with his alice smith love endeavor remix being tied for my tip top musical highlight of last year i practically mark in my diary to do monthly searches for new re-edits and sundry mixtapes.

i’m turning into one of those fangirls again.

for reasons which are more intriuging if don’t explain, i’m about to dash off to an unnamed location to be filmed bouncing up & down on a bed in the coveted role of ‘blonde girl’ but you know what i want to be listening to when i do it?

this utterly bouncable mixtape from the fulton stable.

i won’t pretend its anything other than treasure trove from my regular fulton searches, and you can head to futureboogie for more explaination and to give them full props. like it says on the can; it’s wonky discoid goodness which just keeps on building.

maurice fulton mixtape

One day, perhaps living in the post-oil society predicted by prophets such as Matt Simmons or James Kunstler, we will look back at events like this weekend’s woeful LiveEarth concerts as a fitting epitaphs for a culture that was tragically incapable of engaging in the reality and responsibility of enacting actual change when the need for such measures was at it’s gravest.

It is hard to imagine a more feeble response to such dire threat; seeing the red hot chilli peppers perform, complete with Anthony Kiedis nonsensical nursery-rhyme lyrics, whilst random ‘animal kingdom visuals’ played on huge screens to billions of people I was reminded of something Eugene Peterson once wrote;

The entertainment industry in the West is second to none in providing cheap diversions and borrowed ecstasies. A temporary detachment from daily responsibilities, a vacation from demanding intimacies, is most useful-it can return us to our dailiness, our jobs and friends and families, energized and renewed….But in excess it defeats what it sets out to do for us: we are herded into the bleachers as spectators to the aliveness of life, reduced to the passivity of a couch potato, satiated into sloth.

Somewhere along the line we have lost our ability to engage with any kind of radical action and replaced it with the misplaced sense that it is enough to spectate.

And our artists are silent.

150 acts from all around the world not one with anything to say, not one able to provoke or inspire. Resorting instead to borrowing passion and radicalism from another era, diluted and scrubbed of all it’s edges by the passage of time.

If our best response to the ‘greatest threat mankind has ever known’ is Corinne Bailey Rae and John Legend covering ‘Mercy Mercy Me’, surely we deserve all that is coming.

DJ Shadow-Influx

Solace in cinema is just about my favourite movieblog.
Somehow managing to blend just the right about of geekiness, with a healthy cynicism for most hollywood fare I seem to be interested in most of the things he posts. Being a regular on the site has the distinct advantage of seeing latest trailers and hearing snippets about films I had no idea I was just about to be mildly obsessed with. I say mildly*, that was ‘before cloverfield‘ (or simply ‘the film’ as it will now be known).

So far, we’ve got a shaky videophone version of the trailer and a gradually unfolding set of blogs and youtube clips all designed, it seems, with the sole intention of replacing the ‘reason’ part of my brain with a big inflatable balloon and a desperate, insatiable appetite for the very same kind of vaporous internet hyperbole that gets me like a kid who’s drunk too much squash every two/three months.

It’s all very pattern recognition / I love bees which in itself would be a little bit tiresome if it wasn’t for the fact that the trailer looks so freakin dope. It’s a JJ Abrams production (maker of Lost) so the worry is ‘all premise no payoff’, but right now (well until tomorrow’s obsession) it’s got me more excited than any movie trailer I can remember.

If a The Call of Cthulhu referencing, Blair Witch meets Godzilla, end of the world monster movie doesn’t float your boat, maybe this will. New-(ish) from dj cosmo and jeff buckley collaborator Gary Lucas.

Have a great weekend.

***update-better version of the trailer***

Wild Rumpus-Musical Blaze Up(Rub nTug mix)

photograph of love park, philly courtesy of lsc21 via flickr

Oddly i’m not posting anything french today. not that i wasn’t tempted you understand (see analog giant for some fantastique new sebastiAn remixes) what i am posting is a good old fashioned something for the weekend and little mo’ philly soul to make you get up and dance.

what’s almost unbelievable about this track is that its not been sampled to death. from its opening finger-clicking, piano hook and butter smooth bassline, it’s one of those near-perfect two minutes of pop music that they just don’t seem to make anymore (right kids?).

the decline of contemporary music cliches aside its the kind of track that makes you wonder why you haven’t heard it before when its sound and message is so ubiquitous and its beat tailor made for a good night out.

go, on… go for what you know.

archie bell and the drells - go for what you know

photo by ception

East London head, Disco Jesus is back with the latest of his seasonal mixtapes.

‘Summer Dawn’ takes it back to the more eclectic vibe of the original selections, drawing deeply from the hinterland between disco, early house and eighties electro-funk. It’s a great selection and perhaps more importantly, one that could only have come from the hands (and decks) of Disco Jesus.

It’s up later this week on the ubiquitous firemusic, but seeing as your friends and all, here’s an advance listen.

disco jesus-summer dawn

i’ve got this horrendously addictive personality. once innocent activities, food stuffs or hobbies often rendered subject to my frequent compulsions, becoming a displacement activity for whatever it is i’m avoiding this week until i’ve done them to death and can’t face going back. until the next time. regular stuff, quotidien stuff, nothing too illegal and a long way from depravity. i’m talking checking websites every hour, smoking, drinking hot water with a slice of lime, baking cakes, searching for new music on the internet, eating sushi for every meal, watching the wire, even knitting.

currently, and this might be letting on more than any of you want to know, but currently its raw vegetables and humus- i have to eat them every day.

oh, and shopping. Read more »